With 63.44 per cent of the total teachers' posts sanctioned under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) lying vacant, Maharashtra occupies the seventh position among states with maximum vacancies. Of the 42,091 SSA posts, says data released by the Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD), the state has 26,704 posts vacant.

Bihar with 2,05,378 vacancies, Uttar Pradesh with 1,59,087 and Madhya Pradesh with 79,110 vacancies have the dubious distinction of being the top three states with most number of vacant posts under SSA. The other three states ahead of Maharashtra are West Bengal (61,623), Jharkhand (38,422) and Gujarat (27,258).

While the total number of sanctioned posts under SSA across the country is 19,82,894, the vacancies have been estimated at 6,96,560 (35.12 per cent).

If one also takes into account the posts sanctioned by the states, the total number of approved teachers' posts across India goes up to 52,27,462. Further, it the state quota vacancies are included, the total number of vacant posts will come to 11,87,761.

In all, Maharashtra has 3,39,345 approved posts (including state quota) and 33,433 total vacancies, occupying eighth position in the overall list.

The MHRD report also says that overall 59.05 per cent schools across the country have Right to Education (RTE) Act-compliant pupil-teacher ratio (PTR). In Maharashtra, the overall pupil-teacher ratio stands at 25:1 and 56,932 (81.66 per cent) schools have RTE-compliant PTR.

"It is difficult to get good quality teachers. There are definitely massive vacancies when it comes to filling posts under SSA in Maharashtra. But when we take into consideration both state quota and SSA, 9.85 per cent posts of sanctioned teachers are vacant in Maharashtra as against 22.7 per cent across the country," said an academician.

The report also says that according to the 2011-12 data of District Information System for Education, there are about 20 per cent (8.6 lakh) untrained teachers across the country. States with the largest number of untrained teachers are West Bengal (1.97 lakh), Bihar (1.86 lakh) and Uttar Pradesh (1.43 lakh).